This is a review for The Garden Grill at Epcot, we dined here for breakfast and lunch in September 2019.
Garden Grill is a family style "all you care to enjoy" restaurant. Which means that they will bring food out to you, but you can keep asking for more and more. It is situated on a giant rotating platform, which very slowly moves. However, it doesn't move fast enough for you to get motion sickness, unless you really suffer from it. Although depending on where you are sat, it is a little odd to suddenly have a door appear next to you. The characters that appear at the restaurant are Mickey, Pluto, Chip & Dale.
Breakfast
We love going for a table-service character breakfast before the park opens. We managed to snag an 8am reservation because I really love walking through Epcot first thing in the morning with nobody around.
To start you're brought over juices, teas and coffees, along with Chip's Sticky Bun Bake and fresh fruit. The bun is really, really good. Although watch out, it's filling, so take it easy.
Then out comes the main meal! Potato Barrels, eggs, bacon, waffles - all the good stuff.
The quality of food is a touch better than what you get for the quick-service breakfasts, but it was all delicious and had no complaints about the food at all.
What's even better, as we finished just before the park opened at 9am, we went straight downstairs to Soarin' had a ride by ourselves.
For breakfast, the food, service and characters were all great.
Lunch
We usually have our table-service restaurant meals for dinner, but we were going to experience the Frozen Ever After dessert party to say goodbye to Illuminations: Reflections Of Earth with a good spot, and we didn't want to do that right after a big meal.
To start, we had some fresh bread rolls and a large portion of Harvest-inspired Garden Salad. The bread rolls were delicious, and the salad for the most part was good. I'm personally not a huge fan of some salad dressings, but what they put on this isn't overpowering.
After we're done with bread and salad, the main course is brought out. It consists of Turkey, Beef, mash, stuffing, mac n cheese, fries and veg.
Other than the Chimichurri on the beef being a touch more intense then I'd like, everything was delicious. We worked our way through several portions of some of the items and couldn't fault any of it.
Then it was time for dessert, which was was a Berry Short Cake. I only managed a couple bites, and the cake itself was pretty good. I'd have preferred ice cream instead of whipped cream, but that's a personal preference. Also the fruit did taste like it was canned fruit and didn't taste all that great.
Pluto really wanted some, though!
Lunch was rather quiet on this day. There were quite a few empty tables (something you rarely see at dinner) which means you get a couple more rounds of the characters, and sometimes they're even more fun the second time around.
Our server was Karen P, and she was enthusiastic, polite, and looked after us well.
Summary
Garden Grill used to be one of my favourites, but over the last couple years I have noticed a bit of a decline, but I'm happy to say after these recent visits both food and service has improved. Going first thing for breakfast is an amazing experience, and lunch is a little quieter if you want to eat that time of day. The food is good, the service is good, and the characters are great as always. I always look forward to what chip and dale get up to when they bump into each other as they work their way around the guests.
When I leave a Disney restaurant looking forward to going back next time, that means it's a winner.
Food 4.5/5
Service 4.5/5
Experience 4.5/5
Overall 4.5/5
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